Same Time This Year, and the Giants Know What to Do

For the record, Jerry Reese would also like to win that quote-unquote meaningless game Sunday at Minnesota.

Unlike last season, the Giants have nothing to prove or little to gain, but it’s an organizational thing, said Reese, their general manager. Not just the coaching inferno raging inside Tom Coughlin.

“Tom and I talked about it yesterday,” Reese said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “First of all, the Giants are always respectful of the integrity of the league. We always want to win the game that’s ahead of us, so we’re going to do what we did last year.”

Sit the injured. Play the healthy. Ignore the contrarians.

“Players want to play, they don’t want to be held out,” Reese said. “Of course, we’re not going to cut off our nose to spite our face and take unnecessary risk. We’re not going to play guys that are dinged up, the same way we didn’t play Ahmad Bradshaw against the Patriots last year after he got hurt in the Buffalo game.”

No matter who plays the bulk of the minutes Sunday, it is time to say happy anniversary to the Giants, who a year ago defied calls for them to take a figurative knee and vowed not to gift-wrap a 16th victory to the Patriots when they came to New Jersey in pursuit of a perfect regular season. Consummation came in a spirited 38-35 Giants defeat widely credited with fueling the road-warrior run that culminated with the Super Bowl trophy bouncing from the Patriots’ grasp to David Tyree’s helmet to Plaxico Burress’s hands and into the history books as one for the ages.

What the Giants took from that last regular-season game is impossible to quantify, but Reese said it was most certainly not the satisfaction of almost winning. “This is the N.F.L., not like in high school, where you’re proud of the guys for coming close,” he said. “I think we played well in that game, and whatever we gained was from that.”

In hindsight, any perspective or spin will do. The Giants’ refusal to stand down, rest their starters for their wild-card playoff game at Tampa Bay, was the call of the year, even if it came in the last week of 2007.

Photo

Eli Manning and the Giants gave the perfect New England Patriots a scare during the last game of the 2007 regular season. Credit
Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

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Who actually made it? Coughlin no doubt espoused his old-school values, but I also recall receiving an e-mail message from a high-ranking member of the Giants’ organization, after writing early in the week that they had far more to gain by going for it than by minimizing the risk of injury.

“Exactly the thinking around here,” the message said, citing the same adherence to organizational policy mentioned by Reese.

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Again, there is no pressing need this time for the Giants to send Eli Manning or Brandon Jacobs out against the Vikings for more than a series or two. Given time to sleep on it, maybe they won’t. But through the years, in competitive peaks or valleys, the Giants have consistently demonstrated an institutional pride that is not so palpable around the Jets, for comparison’s sake. They take their long association with the N.F.L. seriously and with a football-as-it-oughta-be mentality that transcends any one executive or coach.

Tradition does establish a standard that Reese embraces as much as Coughlin.

He was in the Giants’ organization for a dozen years before succeeding Ernie Accorsi as the general manager, winning the Super Bowl as a rookie and as the league’s third African-American in that role. In other sports, his achievement would have been hailed as monumental, given the complexities of administering the modern N.F.L. franchise and the number of decisions he made that immediately panned out. But in pro football, in which he who wears the headset typically wears the crown, Reese was a sidebar to the compelling Coughlin story of redemption.

That doesn’t mean it must always be all about the coach. Several years ago, before one of the Patriots’ three Super Bowl victories, I posed a question to Scott Pioli, the stealth personnel and salary-cap maven behind Bill Belichick’s head-coaching genius: why are football executives seldom celebrated like baseball’s — his New England compatriot, Theo Epstein of the Red Sox, for one? Pioli looked at me as if I had asked why offensive lineman can’t fly.

“If you’re in this for the trappings of the game, you’re in this for the wrong reasons,” he said. “And that higher-profile garbage is part of the trappings.”

Now calling administrative shots in Miami, Bill Parcells will no doubt dominate the conversation if the Dolphins beat the Jets on Sunday and transition from 1-15 to the playoffs. Not Reese, though, even if the Giants make another Super Bowl run.

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“I think the coach and the players should always be out front and front-office people should be behind the scenes,” he said.

He can have it his way, just as long as he knows that we know that it was organizational attitude that helped lift the Giants last season. And that should never be forgotten, discounted or confused with that higher-profile garbage.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Same Time This Year, And the Giants Know What to Do. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe